Public cloud is a type of cloud computing that provides storage, compute and networking services on demand to many organizations (and the general public) over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a usage-based pricing model. Public clouds are operated and managed by cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Public cloud users share IT resources in a multi-tenant environment. Unlike single-tenant private clouds that serve one organization, the multi-tenant architecture of public clouds can serve thousands of organizations. Tenants share the same hardware, storage and network resources as other tenants in the cloud; however, each tenant’s data in the public cloud is isolated from other tenants. Most public cloud deployments are used for web servers or development systems where security and compliance requirements are less of an issue. Public clouds can be deployed faster than on-premises infrastructures and provide an almost infinitely scalable platform. Every employee of a company can use the same application from any office or branch, using any device that can access the Internet. Thus, enterprises can deploy public clouds to reduce capital expenditures and to scale IT resources on demand – without the need to maintain infrastructure components, applications or development resources in house.
AWS and Google Cloud, as well as many Azure public cloud services, run on Linux. Enterprise Linux software allows businesses to run on-demand instances in public clouds. In addition, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can enhance the provisioning and development of IT services in public clouds. All SUSE products for public clouds are engineered to extend open source enterprise solutions to the public cloud delivery model with automated provisioning, scalable services, and thousands of tested and certified applications.